Deviant Dispatches

Hyperbole and a Half You never realized as a kid just how often dusting is necessary. Dust accumulates at the speed of light. Your energy reserves have been drained by the time you get home from a longer-than-usual workday. And now you have to go buy milk. Or toilet paper. Or something for the stupid potluck. $100 used to be a lot of money. Now, you spend six to ten times that amount just to live in a crappy apartment. With spiders. And a basement from hell. There are little things at your ankles that demand your attention and break all your awesome stuff. Some of them have fur. Others just poop a lot. You know what's actually in the food you buy now, but can't afford to buy something better for you. Something without cancer in it. Hey, that thing you were so carefully saving money for? The one you were only a few dollars away from buying? SURPRISE! Health care/car repair bill! No fun stuff for you. Just a muffler. And mufflers suck. You discover boxes of stuff...

Please to enjoy this picture of Spousal Unit. He is wearing the latest fashion in facial hair (yes, you read that right - you're behind the times). His mustache has reached the point where it's starting to curl up on the ends a little bit. The whole of it is called the McClellan , though Spousal Unit wishes me to say that he's "not emulating that jackass." In his hand, we see a frosty beverage known as beer. But this is not just any beer; it is a Mr. Beer beverage, lovingly brewed by this mustachioed man two to three months ago. Have a lovely Monday; I'm off to be a mover and a shaker. (Quite literally a mover - we're out of the temp office and work and back into the remodeled acid trip of a space. Hooray.)

 Last night, I bought Spousal Unit two new ties. The one on the left below says "Love Your Kidneys" in many different languages. At a minimum, I was able to identify English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, and Norwegian. There are many others. The other tie is almost weirder. It's a diver in an old-school diving suit . And fish. As Spousal Unit and I said, it makes perfect sense for those things to be together. But not on a tie. These two will go well with his Internet/e-mail tie. He's developing the most bizarre tie collection. This tie is like Bill Gates , " 1999 " by Prince, and a windbreaker suit had a really weird nylon baby.

Apparently the cats are big fans of modern art. And installation pieces. It's not like I was unaware of this; they've made smaller installation pieces before, but always with yarn that wasn't attached to a project. Whoever made the sock yarn piece was much less imaginative about it. Luckily, neither of my projects were damaged, and the yarn isn't too terribly tangled. Unfortunately, I was apparently very inspired by their work, and decided to make some installation art of my own. There's a lot more to this piece, but it's hard to photograph against the white linoleum.

My cat is a plant fiend. The bedroom has become a veritable jungle of plants, every surface littered with them. Spousal Unit and I keep the door closed so that she doesn't destroy them. There are a select few plants in the living room with which she has no qualms, but I'm really eager for the day when I feel comfortable putting the plants out on the deck. (Yes, we're still at risk for snow.) As it stands, we've tried several times to let the wee ones in the bedroom at night. Oberon is a gentlemanly feline, content to curl up at the end of the bed or on a discarded pair of pants for the night. He does have his faults, of course (deciding, at  2 a.m., that the world is dirty and must be cleaned, and licking it all with his industrial-strength tongue), but Titania is the real culprit. In the middle of the night, she'll get up and start munching the plants. We have not yet gotten through a night without her green hunger awakening, and thereby waking us. The cats g...

Over the course of the last week, I decided to write down the songs that randomly popped into my head - things that my brain radio played that weren't a result of hearing a song on the radio. Here's that weird, random list of songs I get stuck in my head at work. 98.6 - Keith (I get this in my head a lot, because at work I have to check percentages. I often run across 98.6, which puts this song in my head.) Daydream Believer - The Monkees I'm Sensitive - Jewel Fine Again - Seether (I didn't even know this song's name or artist till I looked it up, but it ends up in my head quite frequently) Put That Thing Back Where It Came From or So Help Me - from Monsters Inc. Be Prepared - from The Lion King (because I was walking down the hallway singing, "New pants! New pants! La la la la la la!" Also, that link is four minutes of that line in different languages. Worth it.) Thrift Shop - Ryan Macklemore Pure Imagination - from Willy Wonka E...

I heard a great song on the radio last weekend, but I've had trouble finding a full online version to listen to. The song is Tall and Resolute by the Summarily Dismissed. You can hear a clip of it on Pandora , and it is available on iTunes . It's a fun, jazzy tune, and I love the melody. But my favorite thing about it is that it's paired with great lyrics, too. ( My friend Joe talks about the connection with much more authority than I.) The song is about a woman who is... vertically challenged. You can read the full lyrics here , but my favorite lines are as follows. I call myself a femme fatale, but other folks refuse And say I'm just cute 'Cause I'm not tall and resolute Mostly, I love that the word "resolute" is rhymed with throughout this song. The words are intelligently chosen. Speaking of music, I plan to do a post next week of all the songs that randomly popped into my head this week. I highly doubt there will be any connection be...

To preface this post, I'd like to say that this morning, I found a whole, unopened can of soup in the fridge. I put there last night when I was prepping today's lunch. Absent-mindedness may follow. I've been craving gumbo for nigh on a month, so when I finally had a Saturday afternoon free, I jumped on it. Gumbo is always better the longer you stew it, and I find that it's even better the next day, when the flavors have had even more time to intermingle. I adapted this recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (you know, the one with the red-checkered background). In my version, I used Penzeys Cajun seasoning , which I found is a little too sweet for my taste, at least in large quantities. I'd go lighter on that next time, which is reflected in the recipe. I also used bacon grease (from CSA bacon) for the oil because I had some on hand. And because humane, local meat juice is tasty. I'm not a bad vegetarian. I'm a smart one. Vegetarian Gumbo...

*This may be upsetting. Proceed with caution.* I haven't really been able to put this into words before, but I need to try. I get incredibly distressed anytime one person or a group decides to kill innocent people. I know this about myself, and I know I should stay away from news outlets, keep the TV off, ignore the radio dial, and distract myself with humor. I inevitably feel guilty for trying to get away from it, but the involuntary level of obsession I develop is destructive. I bury myself in humor for my own mental health. All the while, I'm still thinking about what has happened. I may be curled up on the couch with Spousal Unit to watch Big Bang, but I'm still worrying and upset even as I laugh. And even though I know I should keep the radio off (because if I turn it on, I have trouble going away from it), sometimes I can't help it. I obsess over learning what has happened, imagining how the people involved feel, and who would do such a thing. My best e...

One day, you are all going to be so sick of farm pictures. But that day is not today, because I have lamb pictures. For some reason, lambs like containers, so these little spotted guys are hanging out near (and in) one. My main purpose in going to the farm was to work with wool, but new lambs are a bit time-consuming (and adorable) so I didn't do all that much with fluff. But I did make the blue and brown ball of roving, which is ready to be spun into yarn or used for needle felting. Turned out decent for my first one! These two were only a few hours old when I met them! Their names are Simon and Sigfried. (I went *squee* in my heart so many times while I was there.) A few of the lambs have to be bottle-fed. Some lost their mother during birth, and some are just so cold in this awful spring that they have to be reminded that food is awesome. This tiny fuzzball is one of the oldest this season at two weeks. But she's the runt of the litter, and while oth...

Don't be deceived by the sunset picture; we haven't actually seen the sun here all week. (Okay, maybe twice, but it was through rain clouds.) The lack of sun is starting to grate on me, which is why I'm so glad it's Friday and I'm going to the farm to help with wool. I'll spend the whole time waiting for the sun to peek its head out, and then I'm going to soak up all the vitamin B I can. And all the rest of the weekend, I'll be cuddling my kitties, traumatized from their vet trip, and giving them extra treats. At least their test turned out well.

I've still been going through old boxes from my days living at home. My recent awesome finds are some old children's books about a cat and various dogs. I read these over and over when I was little, and I think at least one of these came out of my mom's old collection. Peppermint by Dorothy Grider  Peppermint is the runt of a litter born at a candy shop. (Talk about unsanitary.) The shop owner begins selling the kittens for 15 cents a pop, right next to all the lollipops and gumballs, and I bet the parents were pissed. A little girl comes in, sad that she doesn't have a kitten for the upcoming contest, and the shop owner gives her Peppermint. The girl's mother wisely decides the cat needs a bath, and the cat (naturally) freaks out and falls into a tub of bluing right next to the bath. The little girl cries again. And the blue cat named Peppermint wins the contest. Yes, this is from 1966, but who the heck has a tub of bluing next to the kitty bathtub? It...

Source I've made some good progress on my novel. My newest goal is to reach page 300 by the end of April. I'm on page 281 right now. I think I'll pass that goal with flying colors. That's kind of weird to say. When I started this beast, it was only based on a small grain of an idea (when in doubt, zombies). After NaNoWriMo blew over, I was left with 175 poorly written pages full of great ideas, which had spiraled out of control and taken over my plot. (I still kind of feel that way, and it won't get better till it's all written out and I rearrange this thing like mad. With scissors.) It's been a long time since I started it - four years, in fact - and I started working on this draft last summer. It's weird to feel like I'm close to the end of the story and to have 78,445 words, all of the same purpose, in one place. It's still weird to tell people I'm writing a novel, but I'm quite proud of myself. For two weeks straight, I...

Lately, when Spousal Unit and I visit our parents, they yell at us. Things like, "Why do you  have all this crap here? You don't live here anymore. Why isn't it gone yet? Here, take anything you can fit in the car!" That's only a slight exaggeration of the verbal pyrotechnics from my visit home this weekend. But I'm glad to have taken this stuff home. Here's a sampling of my middle school and high school selves: buried treasure in one little box. So. Much. Star Wars junk. Literally. I found several empty chip bags and empty trading card containers, which I must have thought would be valuable someday. I was obnoxiously excited for Episode I to come out, and saved everything in sight having to do with the movie. Including this Anakin Skywalker action figure, still in the package. It's probably worth less than I paid for it. Not only did I find the Star Wars trading cards, I also found my old baseball and football cards. I doubt there...

It's been a while since I provided you with a bunch of random links. Here you go.  - A look at what the things that don't kill you actually make you feel and do: What Doesn't Kill Me - Quotation marks in weird "places": Unnecessary Quotes - Some books do not belong in libraries. Others might be surprisingly awesome to discover: Awful Library Books - My friend Joe has been on a role with his blog posts lately! "Sexy and I Know It" Is a Great Song. Seriously. - Fonts can be annoying even if you're not a literary nerd: The Font Police - There's nothing quite like corresponding with your mom... Some of these made me laugh till I cried: Postcards From Yo Momma - I love these stoneware tea cups with a faux metallic glaze: Osaka Black Metallic Tea Cup - The Oatmeal has a great series of literary posters. I'd love to put these up at work: How to Use an Apostrophe

Lately, these have gone by too quickly. I blinked and March blew away in a wintery haze. I sighed, and the first few days of April vanished. I've been looking forward, forward, so much lately that time is passing unnoticed, and I didn't realize it until a month had disappeared. Each moment is a memory, and I've been forgetting to enjoy, to savor, to bask. I want to remember more sunsets.

I'm a fan of all things weird. We all know this and agree that it makes me quirky and eccentric rather than strange and weird myself. (Here's where you nod your head in placating agreement.) One of the weird things I've always had a special place for are weird safety instructions. You know, the little things people never read about their new devices, which leads to strange accidents and the instructions getting even more bizarre in the next iteration. The best source for these, I've found, is usually a device whose instructions are written by someone who does not speak English, whose words of wisdom are then translated by someone else who doesn't know English. I've run across several like that myself, though the fount of all such wisdom is usually Engrish.com . This is not the case today, as I found this little gem in the box for our Blu Ray player. "The second rule of Fight Club is..."

Last week, Spousal Unit and I got a new TV. It's a 39-inch Insignia , and we paid a damn good price for it. (This doesn't change the fact that my thrifty Norwegian sensibilities were all in a tizzy at shelling out so much money.) We spent a good deal of time in the store debating whether to get 60Hz or 120. What's the difference? I'll tell you. 60Hz looks like normal TV. Good,  but normal. Nothing about looking at it makes me uncomfortable. 120Hz is for action movies and things that move quickly - higher quality, sharper picture. It makes me intensely uncomfortable. One of the first things we watched on the new screen was the finale of Trinity Blood . (We can now watch Netflix on the TV through Blu Ray.) That was fine - wonderful, even - because it was animated. The details were sharp, and we saw so many things we'd missed on our little computer screen. But then, we watched Star Wars Episode I. Believe me, I was against it. The event was delayed for a...